


Petals and Blood

by Applesandbannas747



Category: Fence (Comics)
Genre: Hanahaki Disease, Happy Ending, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27346192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Applesandbannas747/pseuds/Applesandbannas747
Summary: It starts like this: with a love in your heart and a petal on your tongue.And it ends like this: with a love returned or flowers on your tomb.
Relationships: Nicholas Cox/Seiji Katayama
Comments: 18
Kudos: 85





	Petals and Blood

**Author's Note:**

> For Julie 💜 I love you to death and I hope you have the birthday you deserve today!! You are the only reason in the entire world it would occur to me to write a fic like this but I know you love the trope so I hope you enjoy it here <3

###  _Freshman Year_

Nicholas Cox woke up with a petal on his tongue.

It was both a shocking and unsurprising occurrence.

Nick’s stomach curled at the oddly sweet taste of rose in his mouth. He knew it meant a flower had blossomed in his heart. The first one, they said, was always in the heart. And once the disease took root and ran out of heart to bloom across, it moved into your lungs.

That was what love was. Something that took root in your heart and never let you go again. It sounded beautiful to have a flower in your heart; a physical show of your love held securely beneath your ribcage. But that was the thing about love; it sounded a lot prettier than it was.

Nick picked the rose petal from his tongue. Red. Somehow, that was fitting. Red roses were classic and elegant and full of thorns. Just like his love.

 _That_ was the shocking part. His love. Nick looked at the curtain hung between his bed and the next one over. Last night…

Last night Nick had fallen in love with the elegant, beautiful, thorned boy on the other side of it.

Somehow, a late-night talk with Seiji Katayama had turned into _this_ and Nick wasn’t surprised that he was doomed to cough up petals now for his idiocy. Falling in love with a boy like Seiji Katayama when Nick was—well, he wasn’t the sort of boy Seiji would ever love back.

The curtain rustled and Nick saw Seiji step from behind it, zipped into his favorite jacket and ready to go to one of his obscenely early practices. When Seiji glanced over at Nick, he shut his hand swiftly over the single petal he’d pulled from his mouth, crumpling it in his fist. Seiji gave him a curious look but he didn’t ask.

Nick hoped Seiji hadn’t noticed about this first symptom of his. He didn’t want to burden Seiji with the knowledge of his death sentence. 

###  _Sophomore Year_

Last year, it had been bearable. It had been small. it had been easy to hide. This year, Nick had a harder time pretending away both the love and the flowers growing inside him.

He knew why, of course, the spread of disease had accelerated. Last year, his first flower had blossomed just before the end of term for the summer. There hadn’t been much time then to fall in love harder. Only to fall in love _enough._ And it _had_ hurt, in small aches and ignorable stings that had followed him through the three months before seeing his roommate—his friend—again. But now he had plenty of time and Seiji kept tempting him deeper into affection.

“Nicholas,” Seiji asked, his épée lowering to point at the ground as concern took his face. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Nick choked out, swallowing down a cough. A cough that, only moments ago, had been a laugh.

 _Keep fencing like this and I’ll be looking out for petals. I can tell how much you love fencing,_ Seiji had just told him, _but it doesn’t love you back._

It was funny. Exactly the sort of insensitive and insulting nonsense Seiji often bestowed on people. Stupidly, that was one of the things Nick loved about Seiji. How he could just _say_ shit like that and not think twice about it. Some people called Seiji cruel and they weren’t exactly wrong. Seiji wasn’t nice. He often wielded his words with as much intention and force as he did his blade. But he wasn’t all thorns.

Nick had seen the way Seiji’s lips had twitched up in the beginnings of a smile when Nick had laughed. Almost as if that had been the intention of the barb in the first place. It had been a perfect moment, that smile prompting a swell of warmth in Nick’s chest and then—and then this.

_Shit._

Nick didn’t have time to flee to the bathroom before it finally spilled out of him, didn’t even have time to pull off his fencing mask. In a deluge of hacking coughs, red petals poured from his lips and started to fill up the dome of mesh wire and stiff fabric he wore. He could hear only the sounds of his own panting and coughing and gagging. No more laughter or clanging blades or shouting coaches.

This time, Nick could taste blood alongside the sickly rose. His eyes stung with the pain of it. He heard someone saying his name and looked up. When had he collapsed to his knees? He couldn’t recall. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the pain. The pain and the boy standing above him, raven dark hair disheveled from a carelessly removed mask and lovely face pale with worry.

“I didn’t know,” Seiji whispered, sinking to the ground in front of Nick and pulling off his mask gently. Petals fluttered down around them, cascading out of the mask and enveloping them in that sickly sweet scent. “I—I’m so sorry.”

There wasn’t anything else to say. No one else had anything more to add either.

_I’m sorry._

That was all there was.

_I’m sorry that you’re in love._

_I’m sorry that your love is unrequited._

_I’m sorry that you’re dying._

_I’m sorry,_ Seiji might have said, if he’d known well enough to, _that I don’t love you back._

Seiji’s hands shook slightly around his white-knuckled grip on the mask. Nick watched as petals fell from it onto the pristine white of Seiji’s fencing uniform, staining it with red.

###  _Junior Year_

“Do you think there’s any chance they might love you back?”

Nick looked up miserably. The room was scattered in roses again. Lately, he’d been hacking up _whole_ roses too, delicate and small and adorned in blood and thorns. He looked away again, ashamed to see the mess he’d made and was too shaky and weak to help Seiji clean up.

“You don’t have to,” he tried telling Seiji, but he was ignored.

“Have you ever tried telling them?” Seiji persisted.

“I hate talking about this.”

“And I hate seeing _this,”_ Seiji returned sharply, gesturing a hand around the room and at Nick. “If there’s even a chance…isn’t it worth it?”

“Undeniable rejection can accelerate it.”

“I know.”

“Seiji I—I don’t want to die.”

“I know.”

“I’m scared that if I—,” Nick shook his head, another spluttering cough spraying blood and petals across the floor of their room.

Seiji carefully cleared the floor in front of him of flowers and knelt there, hands in tight fists on his knees.

“Nicholas,” Seiji said. It sounded like talking cost him as much as it cost Nick right now. “I don’t want you to die. Please. You’re my best friend. And I know you say it doesn’t count because you’re one of my only friends, but I—don’t want to lose you. I don’t mean to be grim but I…”

“Don’t think I’ve got much life left in me?”

“I know Coach Williams has been trying to get you to enter intensive care.”

Nick looked away. “I’m not wasting the rest of my life withering away from this in a hospital like my mom did.”

“If there’s any chance…even a slim one—isn’t it better to try? To see? If they loved you back, you could get better.” Seiji’s dark eyes shone and his voice became heavy but he didn’t let it quaver. “We could try and convince them to change their mind, even if they don’t love you yet. There’s still time.”

Nick shook his head, staring hard at Seiji’s clamped fists, splattered in red from his blood and roses. Seiji had done so much for Nick. Being here for him as he got worse and worse. Taking care of him. Cleaning up after him. Nick had never wanted to be a burden, least of all to Seiji. He’d seen what this disease could do to a person and what _that_ person could do to the people around them. Nick had never wanted to be that. _If I get hanahaki disease I hope I die fast so that I keep the damage to a minimal._ But he was a bigger coward than he’d always thought. He kept sticking around and making things harder on Seiji.

Seiji was his best friend and he’d let that friendship continue to grow. And the more you loved someone, the worse it hurt when they died. Seiji had already done so much for him and Nick had already been so selfish in return…

“No,” Nick said softly, finding Seiji’s eyes again. “I couldn’t do that to him, Seiji. I love him too much to hurt him like that.”

Seiji stared hard into Nick’s eyes, jaw set even as a tear slipped down his cheek. Nick had already hurt him enough.

“I trust you,” Seiji whispered, and this time his voice _did_ break.

Nick reached for Seiji and pulled him into his chest, burying his own face into Seiji’s neck. Soon, arms wrapped tightly around his back and clutched him harder. One of them was shaking. Or maybe they both were.

Seiji didn’t let go of Nick even when he coughed and expelled more petals and gore all over him. Nick could never let him know this was his fault—because it wasn’t, not really. Seiji couldn’t be blamed for not loving Nick back. For not loving him as anything but a best friend. But Seiji would blame himself anyway.

“If you’re sure there’s no chance he loves you back, I trust you.”

Seiji held him tighter. It felt like a goodbye.

###  _Senior Year_

Nick was in no fit condition to fence. It was no wonder that he wasn’t allowed to try out for the team. No spot on the team ought to have meant no scholarship and no Kings Row. But it was bad form to kick dying kids to the curb.

“How are you feeling?” Seiji asked, collecting Nick from the wall of the gym he’d been leaning against, watching practice with a waste bucket beside him. Nick stood and grinned.

“Why? Do I look that bad?”

Seiji frowned.

“I’m fine, Seiji, see?” Nick tipped his flower pot for Seiji to see. Empty. For now. Seiji didn’t look entirely satisfied but he nodded tightly.

“I’m going to take a shower, are you okay to wait?”

“I’ve been waiting this long,” Nick said easily, leaning back against the wall.

“You’re sure you’re feeling alright?”

“Dandy,” Nick confirmed.

But he wasn’t. Truth was, he couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t _hurt_. Even when thorns weren’t scraping up his throat, he hurt. His chest ached and it was hard to breathe and the exhaustion dragged at him endlessly. He hadn’t been alright in years.

“If you’re feeling up for it,” Seiji started when he came back from the showers, clean and stunning in a black turtleneck and dove gray pea coat over creased slacks, “would you like to accompany me into town? I need to pick up a gift for my mother and…but, of course, I understand if the journey is too arduous—not,” Seiji said, wincing, “that I think you’re, ah, delicate…”

But Nick _was_ delicate and they both knew it. He was withering away. And he hadn’t missed, either, Seiji’s relief at seeing him back at school this year. Summertime was busy for Seiji and though they’d texted and called frequently, Nick had mostly spent the intermitting months between school years with the other kids in the foster home he’d been placed in for his special needs.

 _Next year, I’m taking the summer off,_ Seiji had informed him as they’d unpacked back into dorm 108, the duck curtain staying in the bathroom for once. He’d said it like it was a sound and solid and perfectly sensible fact. He _hadn’t_ said that it was for Nick but they both knew it was. _If_ Nick survived to the summer, he knew Seiji planned to spend it with him.

He wouldn’t make it to the summer.

The doctors at his checkup at the start of the semester had estimated six months. That had been three months ago.

Seiji probably knew it too. That Nick was close. It was why he spent every moment he could by his side. Like now, inviting him out on an errand even when he knew he shouldn’t. Even when he’d been careful to never ask too much of Nick. Maybe because he knew Nick would give it.

“Where are we going?” Nick asked, pushing off the wall and offering Seiji a smile. It wasn’t anything compared to his old ones, he could tell because all that his smiles did lately was make Seiji’s eyes take on a troubled melancholy.

“Candles,” Seiji said. “She likes candles.”

Nick nodded and he and Seiji tramped through the thin dusting of snow that had accumulated on the ground during practice.

It wasn’t a horribly long walk into town, but it was taking longer on Nick’s account. He didn’t have much breath or strength left in him—much _life_. There wasn’t room for anything in him anymore but the flowers and the love, twin hearts and hurts pulsing through him always. Wordlessly, Seiji slipped his arm around Nick’s waist and lent him his strength. Nick took it gladly, letting his arm hold around Seiji’s shoulder as tightly as he might hold to a life raft. It was an apt comparison.

Nick hadn’t allowed himself much of this. Of holding Seiji or touching him. It was too much. Seiji was so warm and sturdy in the cold. So careful, too. He was always so careful. Nick hated that he probably needed that—he wasn’t the careful type but when Seiji was around, he couldn’t be careless with himself. Sometimes, he wanted to be reckless. Sometimes, he wanted to be like his mom. Wanted to turn to ways to escape this pain. But Seiji’s warmth pressed to his side and the scent of his shampoo made Nick remember why that wasn’t an option. Made him remember why he bore this pain. Seiji was both the cause of it and the only thing that made it all bearable.

“I’m not sure I’ll compete in Nationals this year,” Seiji said. Nick knew why.

“You should.”

“I’d rather focus on school. There’s so much travel for matches, it’s tiresome.”

“Seiji.”

“In fact, I already told Dmytro that I’m taking the year off fencing. Aside from competing with Kings Row.”

“Don’t. Please don’t do that for me. You love fencing.”

“I love _you,”_ Seiji retorted back at once, fierce and hard.

Seiji didn’t say those words carelessly and Nick knew he meant them. He also knew that the way Seiji meant them wasn’t the way that would save him. Flowers crept up Nick’s throat and he had to pull away from Seiji to double over and expel them into the trees they walked alongside.

Nick cherished the love Seiji had for him and he cherished the words too. _I love_ _you_. It was the first time Seiji had ever said those words to him. Nick hacked more, speckling red into the white of the snow to accompany the petals and rosebuds. His body betrayed him, reacting like this even when he was happy to hear Seiji loved him. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t in love with Nick. This was enough. For him, Seiji loving him in any way was enough. But it wasn’t enough for the disease and he could feel the flowers close in on his lungs—he could _feel_ it.

The doctors had been optimistic in their estimation.

“You said it yourself,” Nick said, standing up and wiping his mouth on his sleeve, “I love fencing but it never loved me back. It loves you, though, Seiji. Don’t throw that away. I can’t fence anymore. So fence for me.”

“I’ll fence the rest of my life for you,” Seiji said, each word carefully spoken, shaped around the sobs that Nick could tell he was fighting back. Seiji always tried so hard to be strong for him. “It’s only a year.” They both knew Nick didn’t have longer than that. “And I’d rather spend it being with you than fencing for you.”

“Seiji,” Nick said, crouching in the snow with another hacking cough and flurry of flowers. It hurt so bad. He could _feel_ it, the flowers, they were— “I think…I think I’m dying.”

“What?” Seiji was beside him in an instant, fear evident in everything from his voice to his face to the way he moved. “I should call someone—,”

“Don’t,” Nick said, shaking his head. He appreciated that Seiji didn’t waste time asking him stupid questions like _are you sure?_ or _how can you tell?_ Already, Nick’s vision was getting blurry. It was so hard to breathe. To think. To hold on.

He’d spent the last three years living in fear of this moment but now that he was here, it wasn’t so bad. Seiji’s words rang in his ears: _I love you I love you I love you…_ There was a warmth in knowing it for sure, in hearing it. Maybe that’s what he’d held on for. Just to hear Seiji say that. That was all he needed to let go now, to move on and be okay.

He hoped Seiji would be okay.

“This is my fault,” Seiji forced out around sobs that were no longer held securely in the back of his throat. Fingers grappled around Nick’s and held them tight. Nick felt wet droplets falling on them. He wanted to tell Seiji not to cry. He wanted to wipe away those tears. But he couldn’t.

“How do you…?” Nick heard himself ask in a rasping whisper. When had Seiji figured it out? Nick hadn’t wanted him to…

“I shouldn’t have been so selfish,” Seiji continued, frantic and desperate. Nick only felt calm. Calm and sad to be leaving Seiji behind like this. “I put your life in danger for nothing at all, I knew you were in no condition to come today but I wanted to spend time with you before winter break and now—now—I’ve hurt you all because I’m— _stupid, stupid, stupid!”_

“’S okay.”

“I’m calling nine-one-one, you shouldn’t die like this, maybe they can—!”

“No,” Nick said, firm. He reached for Seiji’s right hand and held it as tightly as the left one, forbidding it from finding his phone. “I don’t want to die in a hospital with strangers and tubes. I don’t want anyone else. The only person I want to spend the rest of my life with is already here.”

“And what about me?” Seiji demanded, curling over Nick and pressing his forehead against their clasped hands. “What if _I_ wanted to spend the rest of my life with _you?”_

Nick kissed the crown of Seiji’s head gently before hooking his chin over his shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t leave me. Please.”

“Sorry.”

“I don’t know if I can—without you, I—Nicholas, you _can’t_ die. I love you, I really love you. I think it’ll kill me, how much I do.”

Nick could only pay attention hazily but he heard that. He _recognized_ that.

“Seiji,” Nick said and, with great effort, he detached himself from Seiji and pulled away from his warmth. As he did, he noticed shaking hands holding harder to his. “Loving you is the most painful thing I’ve ever done.”

Alarm bells were ringing in Nick’s head, but they were distant now. There was a reason he hadn’t told Seiji this, he knew there was. He didn’t want Seiji to hurt. He didn’t want Seiji to think this was…

“Me?” Seiji asked, stunned into a stillness he hadn’t possessed since collapsing to the blood-sprayed snow with Nick. His eyes were wide and still gleamed with tears that streamed out when he blinked. “I did this? You’re…in love with _me?”_

“It’s not your fault.”

“But I…all this time and you never told me—I could have helped,” Seiji’s hold on his hands was urgent, tugging him closer.

“How could you have?” Nick asked ruefully.

 _Stupid, stupid, stupid,_ he thought angrily at himself. All this time and he’d never told Seiji and for what? To tell him _now_ and leave him even more devastated? You could hurt with love that wasn’t romantic. You could hurt so bad you thought you’d die from it when you lost someone without being in love with them. Nick would know that better than anyone. But selfishly…

Selfishly, he’d hoped Seiji’s pain was an echo of his now, not the pain he’d felt as a kid watching his mother die the way Seiji was watching him die now.

“You can’t leave,” Seiji insisted through his tears, grip painful around Nick’s hands and nails biting into his cold skin. “If it’s me you love then you _can’t_ leave me, I won’t let you. I—I never thought it was me. But I can—,”

“You can’t, Seiji,” Nick said tiredly. “Nobody can make themselves fall in love. It just happens.”

“But I _do_ love you!”

“I know.” Nick closed his eyes, slouched forward, rested his head against Seiji’s shoulder. He didn’t have the strength to hold it up anymore. “I love you too.”

It was nice to say that.

He shouldn’t have done this to Seiji. He hated that he had. But he was glad to let the words out—they fell from his lips in a more pleasant way than the other products of his love ever had.

“Isn’t it enough?” Seiji pleaded “If you die, I don’t think I can ever be happy again, doesn’t that mean anything? I want to fence with you and I want to stay with you and I want you by my side for as long as I live. I’ve never wanted anything so badly as I wanted them to love you back even if that meant you wouldn’t have time for me anymore. Even if that meant you were by _their_ side instead of mine—I just wanted you to be alive and happy and doesn’t that mean anything—doesn’t that—that—Nicholas,” Seiji spoke the last word with a quiet awe that his racking sobs had lacked, “doesn’t that mean I’m in love with you too?”

“You— _oh,”_ Nick breathed, realizing that the sharp breath he’d just taken in surprise had cleared his lungs.

Sitting back shakily, he took another deep pull of air and then another. His mind started to unfog and his vision began to focus on Seiji, allowing Nick to see him in stark detail. He was all ruddy cheeks and red-rimmed eyes with tears that tracked down his cheeks and gathered at his chin. Seiji sat splayed in the wreckage of even more evidence of love’s torment, blood and flowers standing out starkly against the snow around him. Beauty and pain. That was what love was.

A light breeze kicked up a couple of rose petals and tumbled them low around their knees. A couple were picked up on the currents and carried away. Nick felt like the same thing was happening inside of him. Some of those flowers that’d been growing in him were blowing away, others were staying stubbornly in place. But, by next year, all the evidence of their existence would be gone—weathered away.

“It does,” Seiji said, searching Nick’s face and clearly finding it full of the relief and wonder and overwhelming joy that Nick felt. “I _do_ love you. Are you—?”

“I’ll be okay,” Nick said, then threw his head back to laugh, loud and long. When he looked at Seiji again, the tears were falling even faster down his face. “What’s wrong?” Nick asked, alarmed. He pulled a hand from Seiji’s to cup his cheek instead and wipe away the tears, but he couldn’t manage it; they were falling too fast.

“I’ve missed that sound,” Seiji said. “So much.”

“It’s not going anywhere.”

Seiji stuttered out a laugh and then lunged at Nick, knocking him backward into the snow and falling heavy on top of him.

“Ow, Seiji, I’m still not at a hundred percent.”

“Don’t _ever_ try dying on me again,” Seiji warned him, apparently unsympathetic to Nick’s frailty now that it was clear he’d regain his strength.

“I won’t.”

“You should have told me.”

“I didn’t want you to blame yourself.”

“When you said there wasn’t any hope that they’d love you back, I trusted you. But I shouldn’t have. They did love you back. _I_ love you back. I would have realized sooner if you’d just said. But you almost—almost ruined everything by being so stubbornly, stupidly noble all alone.”

“I’m sorry.” Nick tried again to wipe at Seiji’s tears. “It’s okay now, you can stop crying.”

“I can’t,” Seiji said, shaking his head. “I can’t stop crying.”

Nick thought he understood. Seiji had been so strong for him as he’d been getting weaker by the day but now he didn’t have to be so strong all by himself. He needed the release.

“I love you,” Nick said, pulling Seiji’s face closer to his.

“I love you too,” Seiji returned with a watery but brilliant smile.

With a last tiny pull, Nick brought Seiji’s lips to his and kissed him. Love, Nick discovered, didn’t taste like blood or roses. It tasted like this: Seiji Katayama’s saltwater tears and soft, warm lips.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll have you all know that I had NO idea what hanahaki disease was until Julie brought it up and I was under the impression that you couldn't recover from it so the characters were just doomed to die. Luckily, that's not the case. but Julie does love her angst so of course she never mentioned the recovery part to me XD Julie, I call you a demon child for a reason but I do say it with all the love in my heart 💜 💜 💜
> 
> Thanks for reading my angsty melancholy y'all <33


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